Paul Housley

Concrete Oblique

April 11 – May 10, 2014

Paul Housley

Concrete Oblique

April 11 – May 10, 2014

David Risley Gallery is proud to announce a solo show by Paul Housley.

The materials, the studio, the time spent. Housley's paintings are worked over and over for years before the final image is settled upon. Destruction is an important part of his creative process. The axe is a recurring motif in the show, both in paintings and as a solid bronze object. For Housley the axe refers to his will and creative force. A sometimes blunt instrument hacking away at the debris of failed paintings and studio activity. In another sense it refers to his direct engagement with art history and other artists work, 'I love Picasso, that's why I take an axe to him'.

Housley sees the artistic process as a combination of building and dismantling, building on the foundations of the past whilst also seeking to reinvent it. On the canvas the seemingly simple and immediate imagery is distorted by the accumulated layers and blobs of previous additions and excavations disrupting the surface. Time spent in the studio accumulating on the paintings. His subjects are further evidence of this studio time, ripped canvases, the backs of paintings, piles of stretchers, pots of brushes. Housley's work is concerned with the making of the work, the art history, artistic influences and time spent in the studio which brings it into being.

Housley lives and works in London. He has shown widely across Europe and has shown at White Columns, Andrea Rosen Gallery and Zieher Smith Gallery NYC. He received his Masters degree from the Royal College of Art in London.